• As we enter Memorial Weekend, it’s an appropriate moment to celebrate one of the artists whose works still help Americans commemorate the Civil War: the French-Irish immigrant Augustus Saint-Gaudens, most famous for his bronze relief of the African-American soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts and their white commander, Robert Gould Shaw, but also the creator of statues still adorning parks in New York, Chicago, and other cities.

• The 100th anniversary of the explosion at the coal mine in Fraterville, Tennessee that killed over 200 — leaving it still one of the five worst mine disasters in U.S. history.

• Raise your hand if you know who John Galsworthy is. If you didn’t raise your hand, then you’ll fully get the thrust of an article asking why it’s so hard to predict literary fame, since Galsworthy (best known for The Forsyte Saga) was in 1929 selected as the novelist most likely to be read in 2009.